Cats and BARF

What ? How much? When?
Because your cat doesn’t have 9 life’s.  Extra care for good food!!
The number of people who (partly) put food together themselves or give raw food steadily increases. A good balanced menu however requires knowledge. But putting the food together yourself isn’t only healthy; it is a way to be more involved in your cat’s life. We will introduce you in the world of Natural Raw Food!
The fact that cats are choosy eaters isn’t actually true. Many people are convinced that their cat only eats the most expensive brand and that he refuses to eat everything which is cheaper. However, it concerns the same cats which love to eat the cheapest canned food at their neighbor’s. Cats only try to simply get the most delicious food and you cannot blame them, can you?

Cats eat their prey or meat by tearing it into pieces and swallow it in pieces. In the stomach the food is then processed by the gastric juice which makes the digestion process possible. The food’s liquid is mainly processed through the large intestine. This liquid is essential. A cat which swallows too few liquid, either through drinking or through his food might develop serious bladder and kidney problems. Fresh raw food contains sufficient metabolic liquid which contributes to a good water balance which can avoid above mentioned problems. The cat’s kidneys as obligatory carnivore are barely two meters long; food without vegetable filaments ensures a better digestion therefore. Cats don’t need grains if you decide to put the food together yourself; the carbohydrates which a cat needs are already swallowed through the meat. On the market you can buy several kinds of dry food and canned food for cats. There is however a trend nowadays: Putting the food together yourself; food consisting of raw meat, raw organs, raw bones with or without dairy products and eggs. This food type may be known as “BARF” which means ‘Bones and Raw Food’ or ‘Biologically Appropriate Food’. The term has been invented by an Australian veterinarian Dr. Ian Billinghurst. The other movement is from Dr. Tom Lonsdale. In that case you talk about “Raw Feeding”. In fact it is a rediscovery of old values: For years cats have been eaten like this; people hadn’t heard of canned food. It isn’t strange that people want to give their cat fresh raw food now and then. Lately, we also have been paying more attention to what we eat and it almost goes without saying that we also take a good look at our cat’s menu. We don’t find it obvious anymore to give our cat the same food every day. We also want to give our cat fresh and varied food, because fresh food, we think, is healthy.

Putting the food together yourself can definitely be healthy but you must pay attention to a number of things. Firstly: make sure you supply the food raw; bones which have been boiled or heated in another way get another structure and will splinter. Don’t be afraid that raw bones splinter; after all cats in wild also eat their prey raw. If you want to give raw food, you should give as much as possible meat, organs and bones of a cat’s natural prey. You should therefore give poultry, rabbit, hare and other small rodents.

An average adult cat eats about 100 grams a day. The most true to nature percentages are: 3-6-5% liver, 10% heart, 10-15% bone and finally 70-75% muscular meat. Muscular meat includes all the meat which isn’t organ, like chicken breast. Preferably give a cat these percentages each day: cats mainly eat, in contrast with dogs in nature complete preys. It is therefore much more natural to supply these percentages each day: After all, a mouse also is a “complete package”.

If you give the above mentioned percentages you don’t have to be afraid that your cat will have a lack of taurine: the percentages have been traced back to natural preys and are very balanced therefore. The same goes for the “all meat syndrome”, which isn’t a scientific term but in fact it concerns “secondary nutritional hyper parathyroid”. This means that if a cat only eats phosphor which especially can be found in (organ) meat and doesn’t eat calcium (which can be found in bones) the cat’s parathyroid will be disrupted. The parathyroid wants to make sure that the relation between calcium and phosphor gets balanced again. It will as a consequence start producing a parathyroid hormone which will make sure that the calcium concentration will be high enough. If you don’t give enough bones, you cannot find it in canned food and as a consequence it will be extracted form the own bones. This causes osteoporosis with all its consequences. It is therefore important if a cat refuses to eat bones to replace it by a calcium preparation.

Not all cats immediately love raw food. They usually need to get used to the different texture, smell and taste of this food. Canned food often contains aromatic substances and flavoring in order to make the food more attractive for the cats. Don’t give up immediately, take your time. Mixing canned food and raw meat might help or you can blanch the raw food for a little while. Try to vary with different kinds of meats as much as possible and supply the food in different ways like complete or grinded if a cat refuses to eat raw food in the beginning.
You might be overwhelmed by all this information and perhaps you think it is hard but fortunately there is a solution: in most supermarkets and in almost every pet shop you can buy ready-made complete raw meat packages. Although they have been grinded and are absolutely inferior to large pieces of meat and bones which avoid periodontal complaints, they are perfect for people who don’t want or who aren’t able to put the food together themselves but want to offer their cat some variation.